Quick Look: Road Not Taken

WHAT IS IT: The Road Not Taken is best described as puzzle-based Roguelike. It’s a game where players have just one life per campaign as they take control of a ranger whose mission is to rescue children lost in the woods. It sounds easy enough but in practice it’s more difficult as the ranger has to deal with blizzards, monsters and wildlife, all of which lowers his health points.

To help him on the job, the ranger carries a staff that lifts nearly any object. He has to use the tool to carry children or toss away obstacles. Throughout each of the procedurally generated levels, he’ll have to unlock paths by moving certain trees or rocks together. Players will also discover that moving certain objects adjacent each other can craft items or change the landscape. For example, toss two broken pots together and they create a seat. Toss an ax at a monster blocking your path and you can open up a way to the next room. If players get stuck trying to rescue children, they can teleport back to the beginning of the forest and retrace their steps. (An important lesson they’ll need to learn.)

Players will run into special hand-crafted levels like these once in a while.

WHAT DOES IT PLAY LIKE: In many ways, Road Not Taken is a survival game, where knowledge is power. At first, it can be difficult as novices adjust to the peculiar mechanics. The ranger can lift up objects but doing so saps away his health. The larger and heavier the entity, the more it will hurt the ranger. To mitigate this problem, players can build fires (toss to pieces of wood together). That enables the ranger to warm themselves and cook food to regain health. There are other items they can craft and discover, including potions and trousers that lets him left heavier objects. (You can equip up to four power-ups on the character.) And thankfully, the recipes for items are recorded in a Book of Secrets.

But what makes Road Not Taken a Roguelike is that once the ranger dies. He’s dead for good. Players lose all their items and they have to start over as the ranger has to survive 15 years so that he can retire. Each mission to rescue the children represents a year in his life. In between, players can interact with the people of the village. They’ll see children they rescue age and grow up. Some villagers can even get sick and die if they don’t get medicine that the ranger can craft in the wilderness. Trading items with them fosters relationship and those ties will give players stat boosts and even reveal hints. There’s even a light dating-sim element that leads to marriage.

After your first mission, players will get a house and they can fill it with furniture and even cats.

SO WHAT IF YOU’RE NOT SO GOOD?: Roguelikes work because there’s an addictive quality to failing and learning from your mistakes. A once-difficult game gets easier because of the knowledge and skill players gain over the course of multiple play-throughs. But it can be frustrating, especially when you have to rebuild relationships.

To mitigate this, there are shrines scattered throughout the world. It allows players to be resurrected if they die. They still lose items and they have to give up resources, but it’s a sacrifice some are willing to make to keep their progress. It’s difficult to get through the whole campaign without A) dying and B) saving all the children. (Accomplishing both feats earns a special ending.)

As for the name, the developers said that yes, it’s inspired by the Robert Frost poem. They said that there’s a standard path that people in the world take. They’re supposed to get a good job, marry and have children. But the ranger in the game is the counter to those expectations. His life is the Road Not Taken, and players can meander down it later in the year when the indie title is released on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and Steam.